Tigranes and the New Great-Kingdom of Armenia The affairs of the mainland of Asia Minor were connected by various relations with this maritime war. The variance which existed between Rome and the kings of Pontus and Armenia did not abate, but increased more and more. On the one hand Tigranes, kingof Armenia, pursued his aggressive conquests in the most reckless manner. The Parthians, whose state was at this period torn by internal dissensions and enfeebled, were by constant hostilities driven farther and farther back into the interior of Asia. Of the countries between Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Iran, the kingdoms of Corduene (northern Kurdistan), and Media Atropatene (Azerbijan), were converted from Parthian into Armenian fiefs, and the kingdom of Nineveh (Mosul), or Adiabene, was likewise compelled, at least temporarily, to become a dependency of Armenia. In Mesopotamia, too, particularly in and around Nisibis, the Armenian rule was established; but the southern half, which was in great part desert, seems not to have passed into the firm possession of the new great-king, and Seleucia, on the Tigris, in particular, appears not to have become subject to him. The kingdom of Edessa or Osrhoene he handed over to a tribe of wandering Arabs, which he transplanted from southern Mesopotamia and settled in this region, with the view of commanding by its means the passage of the Euphrates and the great route of traffic[7].
But Tigranes by no means confined his conquests to the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Cappadocia especially was the object of his attacks, and, defenceless as it was, suffered destructive blows from its too potent neighbour. Tigranes wrested the eastern province Melitene from Cappadocia, and united it with the opposite Armenian province Sophene, by which means he obtained command of the passage of the Euphrates with the great thoroughfare of traffic between Asia Minor and Armenia. After the death of Sulla the Armenians even advanced into Cappadocia proper, and carried off to Armenia the inhabitants of the capital Mazaca (afterwards Caesarea) and eleven other towns of Greek organization.
Nor could the kingdom of the Seleucids, already in full course of dissolution, oppose greater resistance to the new great-king. Here the south from the Egyptian frontier to Straton's Tower (Caesarea) was under the rule of the Jewish prince Alexander Jannaeus, who extended and strengthened his dominion step by step in conflict with his Syrian, Egyptian, and Arabic neighbours and with the imperial cities. The larger towns of Syria - Gaza, Straton's Tower, Ptolemais, Beroea - attempted to maintain themselves on their own footing, sometimes as free communities, sometimes under so-called tyrants; the capital, Antioch, in particular, was virtually independent. Damascus and the valleys of Lebanon had submitted to the Nabataean prince, Aretas of Petra. Lastly, in Cilicia the pirates or the Romans bore sway. And for this crown breaking into a thousand fragments the Seleucid princes continued perseveringly to quarrel with each other, as though it were their object to make royalty a jest and an offence to all; nay more, while this family, doomed like the house of Laius to perpetual discord, had its own subjects all in revolt, it even raised claims to the throne of Egypt vacant by the decease of king Alexander II without heirs.
Accordingly king Tigranes set to work there without ceremony. Eastern Cilicia was easily subdued by him, and the citizens of Soli and other towns were carried off, just like the Cappadocians, to Armenia. In like manner the province of Upper Syria, withthe exception of the bravely-defended town of Seleucia at the mouth of the Orontes, and the greater part of Phoenicia were reduced by force; Ptolemais was occupied by the Armenians about 680, and the Jewish state was already seriously threatened by them. Antioch, the old capital of the Seleucids, became one of the residences of the great-king. Already from 671, the year following the peace between Sulla and Mithradates, Tigranes is designated in the Syrian annals as the sovereign of the country, and Cilicia and Syria appear as an Armenian satrapy under Magadates, the lieutenant of the great-king. The age of the kings of Nineveh, ofthe Salmanezers and Sennacheribs, seemed to be renewed; again oriental despotism pressed heavily on the trading population of the Syrian coast, as it did formerly on Tyre and Sidon; again great states of the interior threw themselves on the provinces along the Mediterranean; again Asiatic hosts, said to number half a million combatants, appeared on the Cilician and Syrian coasts.
As Salmanezer and Nebuchadnezzar had formerly carried the Jews to Babylon, so now from all the frontier provinces of the new kingdom - from Corduene, Adiabene, Assyria, Cilicia, Cappadocia - the inhabitants, especially the Greek or half-Greek citizens of the towns, were compelled to settle with their whole goods and chattels (under penalty of the confiscation of everything that they left behind) in the new capital, one of those gigantic cities proclaiming rather the nothingness of the people than the greatness of the rulers, which sprang up in the countries of the Euphrates on every change in the supreme sovereignty at the fiat of the new grand sultan. The new "city of Tigranes", Tigrano-certa, founded on the borders of Armenia and Mesopotamia, and destined as the capital of the territories newly acquired for Armenia, became a city like Nineveh and Babylon, with walls fifty yards high, and the appendages of palace, garden, and park that were appropriate to sultanism. In other respects, too, the new great-king proved faithful to his part. As amidst the perpetual childhood of the east the childlike conceptions of kings with real crowns on their heads have never disappeared, Tigranes, when he showed himselfin public, appeared in the state and the costume of a successor of Darius and Xerxes, with the purple caftan, the half-white half-purple tunic, the long plaited trousers, the high turban, and the royal diadem - attended moreover and served in slavish fashion, wherever he went or stood, by four "kings".
King Mithradates acted with greater moderation. He refrained from aggressions in Asia Minor, and contented himself with - what no treaty forbade - placing his dominion along the Black Sea ona firmer basis, and gradually bringing into more definite dependence the regions which separated the Bosporan kingdom, now ruled under his supremacy by his son Machares, from that of Pontus. But he too applied every effort to render his fleet and army efficient, and especially to arm and organize the latter after the Roman model; in which the Roman emigrants, who sojourned in great numbers at his court, rendered essential service.
The Romans had no desire to become further involved in Oriental affairs than they were already. This appears with striking clearness in the fact, that the opportunity, which at this time presented itself, of peacefully bringing the kingdom of Egypt under the immediate dominion of Rome was spurned by the senate. The legitimate descendants of Ptolemaeus son of Lagus had come to an end, when the king installed by Sulla after the death of Ptolemaeus Soter II Lathyrus - Alexander II, a son of Alexander I - was killed, a few days after he had ascended the throne, on occasion of a tumult in the capital (673). This Alexander had in his testament[8] appointed the Roman community his heir. The genuineness of this document was no doubt disputed; but the senate acknowledged it by assuming in virtue of it the sums deposited in Tyre on account of the deceased king. Nevertheless it allowed two notoriously illegitimate sons of king Lathyrus, Ptolemaeus XI, who was styled the new Dionysos or the Flute-blower (Auletes), and Ptolemaeus the Cyprian, to take practical possession of Egypt and Cyprus respectively. They were not indeed expressly recognized by the senate, but no distinct summons to surrender their kingdoms was addressed to them. The reason why the senate allowed this state of uncertainty to continue, and did not commit itself to a definite renunciation of Egypt and Cyprus, was undoubtedly the considerable rent which these kings, ruling as it were on sufferance, regularly paid for the continuance of the uncertainty to the heads of the Roman coteries. But the motive for waiving that attractive acquisition altogether was different. Egypt, by its peculiar position and its financial organization, placed in the hands of any governor commanding it a pecuniary and naval power and generally an independent authority, which were absolutely incompatible with the suspicious and feeble government of the oligarchy: in this point of view it was judicious to forgo the direct possession of the country of the Nile.
7. The foundation of the kingdom of Edessa is placed by native chronicles in 620 (IV. I. The Parthian Empire), but it was not till some time after its rise that it passed into the hands of the Arabic dynasty bearing the names of Abgarus and Mannus, which we afterwards find there. This dynasty is obviously connected with the settlement of many Arabs by Tigranes the Great in the region of Edessa, Callirrhoe, Carrhae (Plin. H. N. v. 20, 85; ax, 86; vi. 28, 142); respecting which Plutarch also (Luc. 21) states that Tigranes, changing the habits of the tent-Arabs, settled them nearer to his kingdom in order by their means to possess himself of the trade. We may presumably take this to mean that the Bedouins, who were accustomed to open routes for traffic through their territory and to levy on these routes fixed transit-dues (Strabo, xvi. 748), were to serve the great-king as a sort of toll-supervisors, and to levy tolls for him and themselves at the passage of the Euphrates. These "Osrhoenian Arab", (
8. The disputed question, whether this alleged or real testament proceeded from Alexander I (d. 666) or Alexander II (d. 673), is usually decided in favour of the former alternative. But the reasons are inadequate; for Cicero (de L. Agr. i. 4, 12; 15, 38; 16, 41) does not say that Egypt fell to Rome in 666, but that it did so in or after this year; and while the circumstance that Alexander I died abroad, and Alexander II in Alexandria, has led some to infer that the treasures mentioned in the testament in question as lying in Tyre must have belonged to the former, they have overlooked that Alexander II was killed nineteen days after his arrival in Egypt (Letronne, Inscr, de I'Egypte, ii. 20), when his treasure might still very well be in Tyre. On the other hand the circumstance that the second Alexander was the last genuine Lagid is decisive, for in the similar acquisitions of Pergamus, Cyrene, and Bithynia it was always by the last scion of the legitimate ruling family that Rome was appointed heir. The ancient constitutional law, as it applied at least to the Roman client-states, seems to have given to the reigning prince the right of ultimate disposal of his kingdom not absolutely, but only in the absence of